Down the Rabbit Hole
Season 23
Episode 11
Editor’s Rating
2 stars
**
Peaches and rabbit are the central ingredients in the chefs’ last pair of challenges in the Carolinas.
Photo: Paul Cheney/Bravo
This was not a good episode of Top Chef. I thought a lot about giving it one star, actually, because it included basically every gripe I’ve had with this season of this show. So much fan acknowledgment and integration that the challenge didn’t work as a result. One of the final decisions being taken out of the judges’ hands, and very little transparency in the decision-making that determined who won this episode. A chef who very clearly did poorly, but there was no real discussion of that at the Judges’ Table. Some really irritating “I want to be the main character” behavior from one of the contestants. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
I went with two stars because I want to leave a one-star rating open for something truly wild — like, if Tom Sandoval is a guest judge in a truly heinous bit of Bravo synergy, or something — but for me, this was a really lackluster episode of Top Chef. Look, I’m not saying that America’s Culinary Cup is the better show overall, because this first season was structurally inconsistent. (The finale aired May 13; you can binge it all now on Paramount+). But every time Padma and her co-judges explained to a chef why they got the score they did, down to the number of points awarded? I long for that kind of straightforwardness on Top Chef. And I long for guest judges as pedigreed as Eric Ripert; the last time he was on Top Chef was 2022, but there he was, on the ACC finale. Why am I suffering through learning who the Try Guys are? What’s their connection to the Carolinas? None? Okay. Great.
We’re getting to the point in the competition where contestants start realizing, “Hey, I could get to the finals, what do I have to do to make it there?”, and Sherry, after a season of bragging about her Michelin credentials and how elite her work experience has been, and increasing frustration with her resume and her dishes not impressing the judges, loses it a little bit. I’m not sure how else to describe the emotional rollercoaster she goes through in this episode — and I think it was weird that the chefs were okay with her trash-talking their dishes, but suddenly got all up in arms when Jonathan defended his own dish at Judges’ Table — but we’ll get there. For now, let me just say I liked Sherry a little less at the end of “Down the Rabbit Hole,” although I will admit she was completely right about the Quickfire win being stolen from her. That was some bullshit. Here’s what happened: The chefs show up at Unity Park for their last Quickfire challenge in the Carolinas. Kristen says some really awkwardly written copy about how this season has been them “trying things you otherwise might not have tried before,” which is an introduction to Try Guys personalities Keith Habersberger and Rachel Cole. I don’t know anything else about these people, and I will not be learning anything more; this is me maintaining my “no YouTube personalities” approach to life.
Keith and Rachel are the guest judges for this challenge, the three parts of which Top Chef fans voted on in social media polls. What the chefs learn first is that they’ll be cooking with peaches, which the fans selected over boiled nuts and pawpaw. The chefs then have to shop at Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery, and they nearly all take the free loaf of stecca bread offered there, and they all gravitate toward similar ingredients because they don’t know what the other twists will be, so they all are playing it a little safe. There are a lot of heirloom tomatoes, herbs, and soft cheeses going around, and this, in my opinion, is the sign of poor challenge design. If you give the chefs one ingredient and then strike fear in them by saying two more twists are coming, they’re all going to shift into survival mode and decide to do something easy. Easy is bread. And that’s how the challenge becomes boring, instead of the thrilling idea the Top Chef producers wrongly believed they had.
Now, Sherry — who insults the other chefs choosing to serve bread — is, essentially, serving bread. She’s making a tostada covered with burrata and peaches, served with a fresh corn salsa and chipotle aioli. It seems like she’ll have no time finishing it in 30 minutes. (The second reveal is that fans voted to give the chefs 30 minutes, instead of either 15 or 20.) The third reveal, though, pisses nearly everyone off, and Sherry the most: With 15 minutes to go, the chefs all have to shift to the workstation to their right. The fans voted for this over the chefs making their dish into a sandwich or adding a foam. This means that Sieger gets Laurence’s ingredients, Laurence gets Anthony’s, Anthony gets Rhoda’s, Rhoda gets Sherry’s, Sherry gets Jonathan’s, and Jonathan gets Sieger’s.
Kristen clarifies that the chefs can either continue with the planned dish already being made at their new station or use those ingredients to make something else, but no one really does that, and I don’t get why. Sherry complains about Jonathan’s “bitter-ass” pesto, but plates it anyway. Sieger gripes about doing a crostini when he hadn’t wanted to, but he serves the bread. Again: This is not interesting to watch. This situation has happened previously on Top Chef — and other versions of it, like when chefs have to cook a dish together, relay-style, but can’t communicate with each other about the vision they had in mind — and I think it’s fucked up every time. You basically are stealing another person’s dish, and that kind of gameplay is not why I watch this show. Here are their dishes:
Laurence: Crostini with peach and raisin relish, pickled peaches, arugula, and yogurt sauce.
Rhoda: Peach and burrata tostada, chipotle aioli, and corn relish.
Sherry: Crostini with gochujang peaches, heirloom tomatoes, and fresh basil pesto.
Jonathan: Peaches with heirloom tomatoes, sardines, and green harissa.
Sieger: Crostini with roasted peaches, feta, aillade (a French garlic, herb, and nut sauce), sunflower seeds, and dill.
Anthony: Crostini with arugula, roasted and pickled peaches, whipped feta.
The least-favorite dishes are Jonathan’s (the sardines were too overpowering), Anthony’s (the bread and peaches were cut too thick), and Sherry’s (the ingredients were too big and the sauce was too bitter). The favorites were Laurence (specifically the vinegar mostarda that Anthony was so proud of), Sieger’s (they praise his addition of dill, which Laurence hadn’t originally planned), and Rhoda’s, which was Sherry’s planned dish with no alterations at all. Sherry even told Rhoda what the final elements of the dish were supposed to be when they changed stations. Of course, Rhoda wins, and Sherry is immediately (and I agree with her on this) furious, congratulating Rhoda on “plating it” for the win. I really hope that Rhoda actually gave her some of the $10,000 prize because, yeah, that was Sherry’s money that Rhoda took out of her pocket.
If you thought the Quickfire was too convoluted, get ready for the Elimination challenge! Let me try to understand how Kristen linked these ideas together: The Swamp Rabbit Trail they are on is a top destination for cyclists, and also, Michelin North America is based in Greenville. So the chefs have to cook rabbit, but they also have to pay homage to the Michelin standard, and also, they have to feed 24 diners in addition to the judges, and also, five of those diners will be mystery diners like those used by Michelin, and those mystery diners get to decide who wins. The judges, meanwhile, decide who goes home, including guest judges chefs Niki Nakayama and Adam Cooke and retired Olympic cyclist Brent Bookwalter. This is the exact same format as “Desserts Fit for a Queen,” and I disliked it then, and I dislike it now. Are the mystery diners actual Michelin employees? Why don’t we learn the outcome of all their votes? Are the chefs supposed to serve dishes that could win a Michelin star, or are they just being judged on the quality of their rabbit? Should plating matter? Does a haute-cuisine approach matter? There are just so many vagaries when Eliminations are judged like this, and I think ceding this much power to people who are the series’s actual judges is a mistake.
Anyway. The chefs have to butcher fresh rabbit, create a dish featuring it, and serve 24 diners consistently cooked plates, which is difficult because rabbit is such a finicky protein. Everyone is pretty chill, except for Sherry, who slides into “I’m going to be the focus of this episode” mode by saying things like, “I’m gonna come out for blood,” and Laurence, who didn’t go to culinary school and has never butchered a rabbit before. In fact, most of the chefs haven’t cooked rabbit since their training days, which adds a level of difficulty here. Rhoda and Sherry both decide to go homey, the former with a stew and the latter with mofongo. Anthony and Jonathan are both doing two preparations of rabbit. (Uh oh, we know how Top Chef judges feel about duo plates.) Sieger is making the very smart move of wrapping the lean rabbit in fat, in this case bacon. And Laurence is doing a siu mai dumpling with velveted rabbit; we see him double-chopping the meat to tenderize it and coat it with cornstarch before packing it into his prebought wrappers. Everyone’s version of what “Michelin” means seems to differ: Anthony, who is pairing rabbit and carrot together in an homage to Bugs Bunny (this goddamn millennial, lol), is applying it to his techniques and his artistic plating. Sherry’s using the chip on her shoulder from the Quickfire to make a statement about how Brazilian and Latin flavors aren’t prioritized by Michelin. (There are many Brazilian restaurants serving Brazilian food that have been recognized by Michelin, but sure.) And again, I think part of the problem here is that the challenge terms are unclear: Are you making the best rabbit dish, or the best Michelin dish? Here’s what the chefs made:
Sieger: Rabbit roulade with rabbit and offal farce, braised endive, hazelnut, and cauliflower puree.
Sherry: Jerk-braised rabbit with mofongo made with yucca and plantains, avocado crema.
Laurence: Rabbit siu mai with velveted loin and pork fat.
Jonathan: Rabbit croquette, and rabbit tenderloin with roasted mushroom and leek saute.
Rhoda: Roasted rabbit loin with rabbit sausage and pea stew (she leaves off the gigante beans that she had originally proposed because they weren’t cooked in time).
Anthony: Braised rabbit hind legs in a cigar, rabbit loin, carrot top salsa verde, rabbit jus, and carrot.
God, the mystery diners. Whenever Top Chef cut to someone in the dining room whose face was partially blocked, or paired someone’s comments with disjointed shots of people’s hands cutting up food, I simply had to laugh. This was presented so seriously, and I just found it really corny, especially because the mystery diners’ critiques often felt so simplistic. Sieger and Sherry served first, and the judges liked their dishes the best. When Tom calls Sieger’s “Michelin-style cooking” and a mystery diner says they don’t like Sieger’s dish because it’s been “done before,” yeah, I’m going to take Tom’s comments as more legitimate. Everyone else is on a “fine” to “disappointing” scale. Rhoda’s stew tastes good, but Tom calls it “pretty rustic,” and Kristen criticizes it — like she criticized Sherry’s curry last week — as having too many elements. Laurence’s wrappers dry out and don’t stick to his filling, meaning that he serves some of the siu mai upside down, which the mystery diners notice. But Jonathan and Anthony fare the worst and are discussed at the Judges’ Table, and I’m sorry, I think the judges have lost the plot. Jonathan’s braising liquid was salty, sure. But Gail was obsessive about how large his croquette was. The number of times she mentioned it! Are we being serious? It was cooked well, so what does it matter? And why so much enmity for Anthony’s dish? If the meat was dry, it was dry. But Gail calling it “precious” and “disjointed,” and Tom saying it was a dish fit for a rabbit … there was a little smirking contempt from both of them that I really did not like. Mix the four items around and take a bite! How hard is that?
Oh yeah, and then during judging, Jonathan says at least his croquette was entree-sized, not an hors d’oeuvres, and everyone gasps and acts like Jonathan was attacking Anthony and the smallness of his bites. Yeah, he probably was. But Anthony did serve them half an eggroll! If you can’t defend yourself at the Judges’ Table, where else can you? And the real person who should have been up there getting critiqued is Laurence, because one dry, poorly wrapped siu mai is not a full meal, and there was no consistency to how it was served! Gail kept bringing up how Jonathan’s saltiness was a technical error, but Laurence’s poor preparation of the siu mai was a technical error, too. Nothing Jonathan said was worse than Sherry’s complaints and insults all episode about everyone else’s techniques and preparation; that little look Anthony gave Sherry when she kept making barbs that clearly applied to him was a very nice way to treat her clear elitism in this episode. I’m not sure I could have been that nice in his position. Sherry gets the win because the mystery diners preferred her dish. And the judges sent Anthony home, because although his sauces were more complex than Jonathan’s, the eggroll had no rabbit flavor, and the other rabbit piece was just as dry. Tom and Kristen would rather eat Jonathan’s croquette than anything on Anthony’s plate, and I’m really sad to see him go. I know I am more pro-Jonathan than the people reading these recaps, but I didn’t want Anthony to go home this early, either. His Goku run has come to an end.
• The dishes I most wanted to eat this episode: I refuse to even hypothetically eat any of the Quickfire dishes out of principle, and I had my own moment of contempt when the Try Guys judges were so impressed by Sherry’s pairing of chipotle and peach. That’s a very popular flavor profile, come on now. I’m not a rabbit person, but I’d probably eat Sherry’s braised jerk rabbit and Jonathan’s croquette.
• About the Try Guys: Their whole thing is trying new experiences? I already have the canceled-too-soon Review to watch for that!
• Again, while I sympathize with Sherry’s rightful anger at losing out on $10,000, her behavior this episode was just wacky. She accused Tom of “trying to mess with my head,” and while she was right about the braise and Tom was wrong, it’s not like he was trying to sabotage her. After her tirade during Elimination dish prep, she suddenly tells Rhoda and Laurence she didn’t mean any of it because “I was hungry,” which makes me think she realized she was coming across badly on camera and decided to chill out. And her whole speech about how she wanted to “break these constructed ideas and barriers that people have about food” with her mofongo dish … Sherry, you talk about working at Michelin restaurants all the time! You are the person helping construct those barriers outside of the setting of Top Chef!
• Poor Anthony. When he told Tom that story about doing badly on his culinary school final because his rabbit was overcooked, the foreshadowing was right there.
• When Sieger asked if all the cameras caught Tom praising his dish, I laughed. I’ve vacillated back and forth on Sieger a lot, but I’m realizing the venue in which I would probably enjoy him most is as a snarky podcaster about reality TV.
Sign Up for the Vulture Newsletter
Entertainment news, for the pop-culture obsessed.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice